Because the face paint industry will never die.
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Image by Bill Feig / AP
At Friday's Leeds-Sheffield Wednesday game a Leeds fan decided to express his displeasure with the opposing goalie.
According to noted soccer photographer Craig Norwood, the man who assaulted the goalkeeper is 20-year-old Aaron Cawley. He's a huge fan of the Leeds football club, but has been banned from every single football stadium in England since he was 16 and was found to be involved in a giant riot that took place outside a match. Cawley broke that ban to go to this week's game, only to illustrate the very type of behavior that got him in trouble in the first place. This would be the fourth time Cawley has violated his ban, proving they should probably develop some kind of super ban to keep this guy out of the stands.
H/T This Is Gloucestershire and The Mirror.
Ladies and gentlemen, the return of Aaron Rodgers.
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Remember when people were talking about how disappointing Aaron Rodgers has been in 2012? HA. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I mean, look no further than the fact that the fantasy-football-playing public was turning on a dude after he had two 10-point-or-lower outings as proof that people have no patience or sense of proportion. Three weeks later, Rodgers is on a string of 24-plus games and that 38-point monster last week, and his stats for the year are preposterous: 16 TDs, 4 INTs, 273 yards per game. This knowledge probably doesn't have a ton of impact on your fantasy life — if you have Rodgers, start him; if you're playing against Rodgers, most priests are happy to apply last rites — but it is a lesson: don't freak out if a stud player has a couple of down games. These guys are human.
Image by Michael Perez / AP
In ESPN fantasy leagues, Matt Stafford and Cam Newton were the fourth and fifth quarterbacks picked overall, on average, which put them as teams' second-round selections. There's a certain amount of pressure that comes with that high of a draft spot: the big contracts, the media attention, the cars, the drugs, the girls. (We're talking about fantasy football, right?) And so far in 2012, Stafford and Newton have not built on their fantastic 2011s. Stafford's the 16th-scoring QB, and Newton's the 13th — they both trail guys like Christian Ponder (in most leagues, he wasn't even drafted!) and Andy Dalton (19th QB off the boards.)
However, there's reason to keep hope. Stafford hasn't played well, and it would be foolish to suggest otherwise — he hasn't thrown more than one score in any game yet this year — but his DYAR, a Football Outsiders metric that tracks how many yards better a quarterback is than a replacement-level player, and also adjusts for the strengths of various defenses, is actually 9th-best in the league. That's because he's faced a brutal slate of defenses. And he has been putting up the yards, so the touchdowns will hopefully follow soon. Err on the side of caution with Stafford this week against Chicago and next week against Seattle, but expect to regret it if you drop him.
Cam's case is a little less clear-cut. Newton's problem is consistency, not potency: in his last four games, he's put up 25, 9, 30, and 7. And while he predictably lit up New Orleans and struggled against Seattle and New York, it makes less sense that he went for 30 against the Falcons. Any week, Newton's capable of dropping 25-plus; you just have to be wary of those off-weeks, and he isn't matchup-immune.
Could high jumpers revolutionize short-yardage situations in the NFL?
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In the Falcons’ Week Two victory over the Broncos, running back Michael Turner — who weighs 247 pounds and runs the 40-yard-dash in 4.49 seconds and can build up quite a bit of momentum — failed on consecutive plays to advance the single yard his team needed for a touchdown. On first-and-goal from the one, Denver stopped Turner for no gain on a dive play over left guard. On second down, Turner was again stuffed on the left side. On third down, Atlanta seemed to have called the same play — but this time Turner tried jumping over the defensive line instead of barreling through it. It worked: six points.
Might things not have been easier for Atlanta if they’d tried jumping on first down — and given the ball not to the stout Turner, but a spring-legged high jumper, a "vertical back" who’s trained to get his body as high in the air as possible?
Offenses definitely have room for improvement on short-yardage plays. Data provided by Advanced NFL Stats show running backs last season successfully converted on third- and fourth-and-one only 61.8 percent of the time. Turner was actually pretty good at it, succeeding on 11 of 16 attempts in those situations last season. But even notoriously bruising runners often fail: Brandon Jacobs was 5 of 12. A better system, one that achieved, say, an 85% conversion rate, would be worth an extra point per game for a team’s offense, estimates Chase Stuart of Pro-Football-Reference.com and FootballPerspective.com — a not-insignificant two touchdowns per season.
It's clearly possible to jump over a pile of players who are set up to defend a plunge into the line; that's why backs like Turner use the leap as a change of pace. The question is whether a high jumper could get up far enough that a defender who knew what was coming couldn't stop him. It seems plausible. NFL defensive linemen top out in the six-and-a-half foot range and need to crouch slightly to stand their ground against blockers. The crowns of their helmets are likely no more than six feet off the ground. World-class high jumpers regularly clear seven-and-a-half foot bars; the record is a little over eight feet.
So it seems plausible. Moreover, it's been done before. The Godfather of vertical backs is Robb Riddick, a running back and former college high jumper who the Buffalo Bills drafted in the ninth round in 1981. Riddick didn’t make much impact until his final season in 1988. That year, he split carries with a rookie Thurman Thomas. Thomas took the bulk of the carries. But the Bills harnessed Riddick’s jumping talent and frequently gave him the ball at the goal line. He scored a career-high 12 touchdowns that season, 10 of them from the opposition’s one-yard line (and two from the 2-yard line). Riddick simply jumped over the pile. Watch him in action 24 seasons ago (skip to the 7:40 mark).
Source: youtube.com
Riddick jumped headfirst, but greater height could be achieved with different technique. Of course, athletes using the optimal Fosbury Flop method take a 10-step approach on a curving path that brings them from running directly at the high jump bar to running parallel to it before leaping — impractical for a football game. But Joe Klim, a University of Pennsylvania assistant track and field coach who specializes in jumping events, guessed a good high jumper could still achieve roughly 95 percent of his normal capability using a shorter four-step Fosbury approach, taking only the four strides that make up the curved portion of the J. “A pretty good athlete who can jump about seven feet could probably go six-foot-eight on a four-step approach,” Klim said.
The Saints' Joe Morgan impossibly avoids three tacklers to score, flipping one of them over his back. Football at its best.
Late in the first half against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Drew Brees heaved a deep throw to undrafted receiver Joe Morgan. Morgan went to school at a college called Walsh. So, not exactly a blue-chipper, though he did have an 80-yard touchdown earlier this year against the Packers.
It's the only way to celebrate.
Sir, you're doing it perfectly.
Light weight...light weight.
Clean and jerk and drop that baby.
The once great figure skater, who allegedly had Nancy Kerrigan hobbled before a competition, has a section on her official website for people to leave her messages. They're insane.
Via: tonyaharding.com
Things are bad in Cleveland. They are very, very bad.
The Cleveland Browns are 1-5. This weekend they lost to a very mediocre Colts team, and even though they kept the game close, no Browns fan on the planet ever felt like their team was going to actually pull it out. Why? Because they're the fucking Cleveland Browns.
Since the team's return to Cleveland in 1999, their best head coach BY FAR was Butch Davis, who had a lowly .414 winning percentage. To put that number in context, in the 49 years the Browns were in Cleveland before moving to Baltimore at the end of 1995, the worst winning percentage a full-time coach ever had was .439. That's right. The coach with the worst winning percentage in the history of the old Browns was better than the coach with the best winning percentage in the history of the new Browns. This is all to say, there is nothing sadder than rooting for that team from Cleveland. I know, I do it every Sunday. Here's some proof from Sunday's game.
Image by Mark Duncan / AP
It's hard not to be romantic about baseball.
Image by Robert Galbraith / Reuters
Image by Robert Galbraith / Reuters
Image by Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
Image by Robert Galbraith / Reuters
You'll be drafting this kid to your fantasy team in a few years.
Okay, maybe that's going out on a limb, but this kid looks like Walter Payton in children's size large pads. He is a pee-wee titan. Gikas shrugs off tacklers like an umbrella shrugs off rain. All the fundamentals of a future star are already there -- Gikas cradles the ball with care, switching hands when necessary to ward off fumbles. At the :38 second mark, he stiff arms a mere mortal child, then gains an extra five yards with three defenders hanging onto his jersey in a run that would make Marshawn Lynch proud. AND HE PLAYS BOTH SIDES OF THE BALL. The YouTube user that uploaded the video also uploaded a duplicate, titled "8 Year old Tank." That's pretty accurate. Also accurate (and awesome) would be "The Galloping Grecian."
Sit back, enjoy the tremendous production value on a child's highlight tape, and watch the future of football. Nick Saban's already scheduled his campus visit.
(h/t @TreyKerby)
Student athletes are the best and brightest.
Image by J Pat Carter / AP
In the tradition of Ohio State's Cardale Jones ("I ain't come to play school!") and seemingly 83% of all college football players, North Carolina's Erik Highsmith is in trouble for... well... not coming to play school. For his communications class (HEY ATHLETES, STOP BEING COMMUNICATIONS MAJORS, TAKE A BUSINESS CLASS SO YOU DON'T ANTOINE WALKER!) Highsmith was required to keep a blog for class that would count for a significant percentage of his grade. Rather than writing a short blog post himself, Highsmith cruised down the Internet super highway until he found an Oracle ThinkQuest article about poultry farming. It was written by four 11-year-olds for their class. After the half hour it took Highsmith to parse the meaning of their prose, he decided to borrow it.
A sample of the ThinkQuest post:
Poultry farming is raising chickens, turkeys, ducks and other fowl for meat or eggs. Poultry farms can be: 1. Breeding farms where they raise poultry for meat, or 2. Layer farms where they produce eggs.
The ‘best’ breeds depend on what you want from them. Good egg layers are Rhode Island Reds [brown eggs] and Leghorns [white eggs].
A sample of Highsmith's post (via SportsGrid):
Poultry farming is raising of turkeys, ducks, chicken and other fowl for meat or eggs. Poultry farms can be breeding farms where they raise poultry for meat, or layer farms where they produce eggs. The ‘best’ breeds depend on what you want from them. Good egg layers are Rhode Island Reds [brown eggs] and Leghorns [white eggs].
I do love that Highsmith took the time to get rid of the numbers. Like, "Okay Erik, if we're going to get away with this, we're going to have to disguise it. So first thing's first. Let's get rid of the numbering. Next, let's — wait, let me check this text. Free Pizza in the quad? Fuck this noise. Publish."
According to the News & Observer this is one of two posts that Highsmith plagiarized, but the other one was not written by tweens so it's less funny/sad.
Highsmith's response?
This is just the latest in the CW teen soap that is the marriage of UNC academics and athletics.
Rob O'Connor and Daniel Maynes are pretty bewildered when a pair of cops tracks them down at practice. They get “served” scholarships.
Source: youtube.com / via: thedailywhat.cheezburger.com
They're loud. They're opinionated. They'll type at you in all caps.
This fan lives in a world where teams don't matter or even exist. They are fans of the individual. When LeBron left Cleveland for Miami, they were most upset about the fact that they had to buy a new jersey. Though some of these people can be intelligent and bring a unique perspective to sports (see: the late FreeDarko), many of them are trolls you can find in the comments section of most ESPN articles. And if you thought YouTube comments are annoying, you haven't spent enough time in the ESPN comment sections.
Alternatively, they could have grown up in a place without a team.
Source: img.gawkerassets.com
(Photo by Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com.)
this fan tells you that his group is called "The Stat Head" but you and I know better. Though advanced statistics are an amazing tool that allow us to know more about the games we love than ever before, these guys also have a tendency to suck the fun out of everything. Is your favorite baseball player kicking ass every time he comes to the plate? That BABIP looks inflated. Regression is coming. A pitcher you like playing well? Check out that xFIP. Regression is coming. Your team on a magical run? Regression is coming.
If you've ever wondered why Tim Tebow is a thing, I think it's at least partially because he is a walking middle finger to advanced stats. Also because he's Jesus.
Source: stewtopia
This guy was all-conference in high school, and might have even had a shot at playing D1 ball if his knee didn't give. So sure he's an insurance salesman now, but that doesn't mean that his experience doesn't make him way more knowledgeable than you. It must be true, he keeps saying it over and over and over and over and...
The other day, I wrote a story about Andrew Bynum's recently haggard appearance, jokingly attributing the hangover eyes and suddenly gray hair to his move from LA to Philadelphia. You know how you know I was joking? Because it's nonsensical to believe that the city of Philadelphia turned Andrew Bynum into a homeless guy over the summer. That didn't stop the Philly fans from flooding my inbox with vitriol about how it was just a bad picture of him, and that their city was innocent. I actually had to write the phrase, "Obviously, Philadelphia didn't make him ugly" multiple times. The lesson? Don't make jokes about The Local Jingoist's city. He loves his town, and he's sensitive.
“We were supposed to win.” Yeah and your parents weren't supposed to film this and put it online, but sometimes the world disappoints.
Source: youtube.com
The 107th World Series begins tonight. Here's why you should be watching.
Look at Prince Fielder! He's excited!
Image by Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
Tonight the baseball gods move one step closer to naming their champion, whebn the 107th World Series gets under way. If you have even a passing interest in sports, drama, or fat guys named "Prince," you're not going to want to miss it.
Hey, I see you giving me the side-eye. "Jack, Baseball is boring. This season's been going on for 36 years already. Can't we just ignore it? Basketball comes back next week, and the NFL's great." No! Baseball isn't boring — BAD baseball is boring. This will not be bad baseball. And believe it or not, this season has only lasted seven months. I know, I was surprised too. So no, you can't ignore it. In fact, here's five reasons you should make sure to tune in tonight (and throughout the whole series).
Justin Verlander is the greatest pitcher alive. Full stop. The conversation begins and ends with him. Major League Baseball hasn't seen this kind of dominance in quite some time, and he's shown little sign of slowing down. Yet despite years of crazy success, when he takes the mound tonight in Game 1, he'll be looking to redeem one of his greatest failures. The last time Verlander pitched in the World Series was his rookie year, when he got rocked in Game 1 by the St. Louis Cardinals. He's a must-watch pitcher without any extra motivation. With it? He may literally destroy the Giants tonight. They may not even be able to play a Game 2 after the damage JV delivers to them.
And that's just on the defensive side of the ball. On offense, Miguel Cabrera is coming off a season where he became the first player in nearly 50 years to win the Triple Crown. The only thing Miggy loves more than crushing baseballs is alcohol, and the winner of the World Series is going to douse themselves in a lot of champagne. Would you want to stand between Miggy and a ton of champagne? I didn't think so.
Image by David Maxwell / Getty Images
After trailing the St. Louis Cardinals three games to one, the Giants won back-to-back-to-back games with their, um, backs against the wall. This is a team that most had counted out heading into their matchup with the Reds in the divisional series, yet here they are. They're underdogs again, and so far that's been a position they have very much enjoyed. How can you ever tune out of this series? Even if the Giants fall behind, they could, at any time, be about to go on an another epic run.
Image by Mark Humphrey / AP
You haven't lived until you've heard the “Boomshakalaka” guy mixing in some salty language to his dialogue. I can't decide if this just ruined or enhanced my childhood.
The story goes that when the dialogue for NBA Jam was being recorded, the team had announcer Tim Kritzrow record R-Rated dialogue to amuse the team. Things like: "No fucking way," "Get that shit out of here," and "He's on fucking fire!" When the game was eventually being ported over to Super Nintendo, the people doing the port found those files and created a build of the game using them.
Now that story seems somewhat apocryphal, but what we do know is that the audio was actually recorded (then-Midway creative director Mark Turmell verified that to GameTrailers), and that the video is hilarious and awesome.
It's time to settle this once and for all.
Image by Rick Scuteri / AP
Image by AP Photo / AP
Image by Joe Robbins / Getty Images
Image by AP Photo / AP
One of the most vocal professional athletes when it comes to LGBT rights, Kluwe is also now the only person to have recorded a radio spot revolving around the phrase “lustful cockmonster.”
Image by Hannah Foslien / Getty Images
Minnesota Vikings punter and BuzzFeed Hero Chris Kluwe has fast become one of the most public and well known professional athletes when it comes to supporting LGBT rights. Now, he's put his mouth where his mouth is and recorded a radio spot advocating for gay marriage. In particular, the spot opposes the Marriage Amendment that Minnesota voters will weigh in on on November 6; if passed, it would change the Minnesota Constitution to say that the only legitimate marriages that can be recognized by the state are between one man and one woman.
In the spot, Kluwe is visited by mock policeman who harass him for his now-famous open letter, posted by Deadspin, in which he promised Maryland state delegate Emmett C. Burns, Jr. that gays being able to marry would not turn him into a "lustful cockmonster." Listen below.
LINK: Here's the Minnesotans for Equality website.
And it was by far the least obnoxious thing he's ever said.
I have to admit, this actually makes me like Stephen A. more. He spends most of his time on TV getting in contrived arguments over manufactured controversies, all while carrying himself with an overall air of phony-ness. And though I'm not endorsing the use of that word, this feels spontaneous. This feels like Stephen A., just saying what he's thinking, rather than taking a side of an argument because he knows Skip Bayless (or whoever) will take the other side. If ESPN is going to subject us to such dangerously high quantities of Stephen A. Smith, I'd much prefer, off the cuff, cursing Stephen A. At least then I'll get to laugh while getting an ulcer.